Things We Leave Behind
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: With new beginnings come things left behind.


--what we leave behind--

_"I had a bird_

_her name was Enza_

_I opened the window_

_and in-flu-enza"_

-old rhyme

My father was an admiral, you see. Fought in any battle you can think of, and never forgets to remind anyone who will listen. And, after The War, he received a job from a man named Mason.

This man-named-Mason had a son who was not particularly interesting.

Our mothers, his and mine, decided we were to be the best of friends and put us in the backyard of our crickety old house, leaving us to our own devices.

His name was Edward.

"Hello," I said, not because I wanted to talk, but because that's what your supposed to _say _when in the company of another human being.

He picked at a scab on his knee until it bled, hardly looking up as he muttered his own "hello". I found this rude, myself being an indignant eight year old who insisted on the saem treatment as my mother and sisters. Why hadn't this little boy bow and kiss my hand, like all the boys who come to see Margaret and Elizabeth do?

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" I had snapped, after a moment of suffocating silence. His eyes were _light, light, light _blue, like the sky right before it rains and the clouds are like wisp of smoke. Startling, in their paleness, with a raven-black dot twisted in the center like a drop of ink. At eight, it was difficult to see anything but scabs and dirt on a boy, but I suppose he might have become handsome in passing years.

Then again, maybe not.

"What should I say?" he asked, in a slight voice hardly over a whisper.

I scowled, and told him (in list form, I was fond of lists) all the things one must say to a lady when in her presence, my chest puffed out and my shoulders square. He listened, quietly and patiently, and when I was finished he smiled and said, "Well, your not a lady."

Three weeks later, we decided we would get married.

I sat with my hands in my lap as our fathers discussed business matters, and he kept his head ducked, his fingers curled together like pale little snakes.

"We should get married," I said, just because Maragert at just become engaged to a boy with sandy blond hair and a nice smile, and jealousy ate at me like a cruel disease.

He didn't seem to hear me, and I opened my mouth to speak again when his quiet voice cut through the September air. "That'd be fine."

My heart swelled, God knows why.

"Really?" I said, grinning so hard my cheeks ached. "You'd really like to."

He shrugged, "I suppose."

As I rattled on about how lovely my dress would be and how handsome he's look in his suit and how my sister would turn green with envy at my luck at finding such a darling young man--

"I don't think," he said, "they let eight year olds get married, do they?"

--

I turned fourteen, and my hair grew very red and my legs very long, and my mother wound her fingers raw hemming my dresses to keep up with them.

Edward's hair was like an old penny, bronze, catching the light like a broken piece of glass, and it reminded me of blood.

We hadn't become friends, exactly. We hardly spoke, though we spent our entire days sitting beside each other. I didn't know much about him beyond what he liked to read and that he seemed to sneeze whenever my sister's cat walked by. I would sew, or read a novel, or stare at the trees and he would do something similar, and this was very constant.

He asked me, one day as the sun burned our backs and stifled the air, "Are we still engaged?"

I hadn't thought about it for some time, but the answer was very easy; "Yes," I said, "I think so."

His jaw clenched slightly, as though he were biting his tongue. "Oh," he said softly. "Because, I was just wondering..."

I looked at him idly, my hat hardly blocking the sun's rays. "Is there a problem?"

He shook his head in short jerks. "No, no," he said. "Just...when your engaged, aren't you supposed to kiss?"

He was embarrassed for asking, I could tell. His pale cheeks were red, and his eyes remained fixated on an ant crawling over his shoe.

I nodded slightly, the thought not quite unappealing, but not very pleasant, either. "I suppose."

_Please, let him have brushed his teeth this morning._

We sat on a floral bench in his mother's garden, and his shoulders just brushed mine through the sleeves. I turned my head, he turned his, and our lips brushed each other like our sleeves. It was not as magical as Margaret described them, not nearly. We both pulled back very quickly.

--

Influenza was not very treatable, back then.

My mother was one of the first to grow ill, and the first to be buried in the local cemetery. Edwards father became ill as well, but I was too concerned with my family's rapid decline to be incredibly concerned about the Masons.

His father died, though, and my father no longer had a job.

"My mother wants to move us north," he told me one cloudy day in the garden. "They say the 'flu's not as rapid as it is here."

I wanted to ask him how much farther then Illinois anyone could go, but decided against it.

He was coughing as he left with his bag of books and his downcast eyes, and later, as I shut myself in my bathroom and was sure no one could see, I scrubbed my hands raw, even though they had been covered by gloves. The influenza was contagious, you know.

I saw him the next day, as well, on our way to school. We didn't speak, as usual, but he seemed to grow paler and paler throughout the day, and his coughs became so violent the teacher sent him away.

The last I ever saw him, in fact.

I became aware several days after my twentieth birthday that, indeed, Edward Mason was killed from the influenza, as was his mother.

And I didn't even feel a pang of sadness.

Which, all things considered, was slightly cold-hearted of me. He _was _my fiance, after all.

--

The nineteen fifties was a very strange time. Not because of the sudden end of World War II, or the rapid progression of rock n' roll, but because of a cherry tree sitting outside my home.

My husband parked the car, and my daughter ran from the seat and into the house, while my son lingered by the back. I climbed out, opened the trunk, let my son carry the butter. The sun hung in the sky, casting shadows around everything that seemed to swallow the entire lawn.

A particularly tall, large, and lean shadow caught my eye.

A face flashed, one I hadn't seen for some time. Pale and finely sculpted, like a refined version of something old and long-forgotten. Still pale, though, hair still like blood and broken glass. Eyes, though, the color of sparkling gold, almost swallowing all of the sun's light in their coal-black pupils.

I froze, stared, froze, stared, all one movement that hardly took any effort on my part, giving me the idea that nothing had happened.

My husband tapped my shoulder, his arms full of groceries, said my name, asked me if I was alright. I nodded, and looked at the tree as I walked.

The shadow was gone.

I wondered where Edward Cullen had been buried.

**A/N Um, found this in my files in a clean-up, and thought I might as well post it.**


End file.
